Various Artists - Fort Worth Teen Scene (1964-1967), Vols. 1-3
Compilations of '60s garage music come and go. There's probably been about a million since the godfather of them all -- Nuggets -- appeared in 1972, with Lenny Kaye slyly zeroing in on that moment just before pop's collective self-consciousness kicked in, catching America'
Skeeter Davis: 1931 to 2004
Near the end of Skeeter Davis' honest, sometimes unsettling 1993 autobiography, Bus Fare To Kentucky, she concludes that "without the valleys, I could not have enjoyed the mountains." True enough. She'd journeyed through poverty, musical triumphs and stumbles, controversy, three marriages, and traumas capped by
Ray Charles Funeral - Willie Nelson / Stevie Wonder / B.B. King / Glen Campbell - First AME Church (Los Angeles, CA)
Even on the most prosaic of occasions, hearing a decent version of "Georgia On My Mind" can be an evocative experience. It's just one of those perfect songs, so perfect, in fact, that it really takes little more than the singing of its very first word
Gram Parsons Tribute - Universal Amphitheatre (Universal City, CA)
Why a Gram Parsons tribute concert now? Good question. There was no real specific reason for such a lofty event -- no anniversary of his birth or notorious death to wrap a big to-do around, and it could hardly be the result of a deprivation of tributes to, arguably, the
Hal Willner's Neil Young Project - Prospect Park Bandshell (Brooklyn, NY)
At their best, Hal Willner's tribute projects (which have included albums devoted to Kurt Weill, Disney movie songs and Edgar Allan Poe) can reveal unexpected things about both the source material and the performers. At their clunkiest, the boho producer/arranger's efforts can come across as
Willie Nelson - Gonna catch tomorrow now
Luck, Texas, isn't as easy to find as it used to be. Development has sprawled the entire 25 miles from downtown Austin to this idyllic little spot in the Hill Country near Lake Travis where Willie Nelson created his own universe more than two decades ago. The old